THE GOOD OLD DAYS

The year was 1955. I was a sophomore at George Pepperdine College at 79th and Vermont in Los Angeles, having the time of my life. Thanks to my dad for picking up the tab for both my college education and my "social life," I didn't have to work. In looking back, that was probably to my detriment, because I think my grades would have been a lot better if I hadn't had so much "playing" time on my hands. However, it was what it was, and life was good.

Between the yearbooks that I still have and the photo albums I made during my time at school, I can take a pretty good trip down memory lane. And I figure that I'd better do it from time to time while I still have a working and fairly decent memory. (Sometimes I can't remember what I had for breakfast...but at least I remember having eaten!)

There were two restaurants near Pepperdine that we frequented a lot in those days. The first one was Chalon's, which as I recall was west of the college on Manchester. We spent a lot of evenings there over cups of coffee. It was a good place to hold discussions and of course the subject matter ranged from chapel services to course subjects to college romances. We covered it all.

The second place we frequented, though not as often because it was a little further away, was Mac's Restaurant at 84th and South Fig. In my scrapbook is a wonderful full menu from Macs, a part of which is shown here. There is a date at the bottom of the menu - Sunday, April 24, 1955. In looking at the prices I just have to laugh. It was a coffee-shop type restaurant, a place college kids could go for a good meal that we could afford. But again, at least the many times I went there it wasn't to eat but to drink coffee and talk. Oh, sometimes we paid an extra 15 cents and got a piece of pie to go along with the coffee, but mostly we talked. Often that was where we went on a first date, after we went to a movie. It was a good way to get acquainted.

Jerry and I had dinner this week with one of my high-school friends and we were regaling each other with stories of what we earned on our first job. We all remembered when payments on our first house we bought were between $65 and $80 dollars a month. We remembered when minimum wage went from 75 cents to $1.00 an hour. And of course I remember when tuition at Pepperdine was $18 a unit. It was all this talk that made me dig into my old scrapbook and pull out that Mac's menu to share with you.

Our young ones will hardly believe their eyes, but the rest of us remember, don't we!